bastecklein's Recent Posts

@Conco2 I will probably still add some new buildings here and there, but nothing major. No big engine changes or new features/concepts. But My Colony 2 is still a long ways away, so MC1 is still the main game for now.

@Sonnyzane My Colony 2 will be a completely new game separate from MC1. I don't know what the premium/business model for MC2 will look like yet, but the My Colony 1 purchase will not carry over. So for a real world example, this would be like if you bought Halo 1, it does not then mean that you just automatically get Halo 2 when it comes out.

So just to be clear, I am not talking about My Colony v2.0, I am talking about a whole new game. This will not be an update to the existing My Colony, and the existing My Colony will still be around and will still be supported, and the server will not be shut down or anything. There will be two completely different games. Buying MC2 will not give you an advantage over MC1 players because they are two separate games on two separate servers.

If any of you have ever peeked at the source code of My Colony or many of my other games, you might notice a common script in all of them called scroll2d.js. Back in 2013, I thought it would be neat to create a web browser based game engine that could be used to render and manipulate 2d tile maps in either normal or isometric mode. Scroll2d is the engine I came up with, and My Land was the the original technical demonstration for that engine.

Since then, I have reused that engine in many different projects, including Gone Rogue, My Colony, Musical Kittens, Antiquitas, EZ Composer, Hell and Back, My Starship, Epic Adventure, the map editor in Death 3d, and more. I think it's fair to say that over the last 7 years I have gotten a got bit of mileage out of the engine, but I think it's also fair to say that the engine is a bit dated. From a technical standpoint, I did a lot of things weird in Scroll2d that, if I could redo it all, would have been done a lot differently. The problem is, the engine is used in so many projects I can't really just make huge changes to it without breaking everything.

I have been thinking of this for a while, and I am considering "sunsetting" the Scroll2d engine and all of it's associated projects and moving completely into 3d/WebGL. I am thinking of creating a brand new engine, unimaginatively called Scroll3d, which will offer similar capabilities of scrolling around a map and manipulating tiles, but will be entirely 3d and use 3d models instead of 2d sprite graphics.

Now, when I say "sunsetting," it's not as though I am going to discontinue any of my Scroll2d apps and games. Really, nothing with Ape Apps ever reaches an "end of life" and I will probably support all projects until I fall from the virus or some other tragedy. That said, I do plan on moving all of the current Scroll2d projects down from the priority list and start working on new titles using the new 3d engine.

I currently have two fairly extensive Scroll2d projects that I do plan on completing first before making this switch, Colony Wars and My Empire. I am pretty far along into both projects, so it only makes since to finish them and get them published to the markets.

So all of that said, here is my roadmap going forward for Ape Apps:

Complete Colony Wars. This is my current #1 priority project starting now, and pretty much the only thing I am going to be working on until it's done. Time to get this game finished and released.

Complete My Empire. As soon as I am done with Colony Wars, I am going to go straight full time into My Empire and get that game done as well.

Begin Scroll3d development. I am then going to be moving all attention into creating the new game engine, which will be a combination/mix of everything I have learned over the years between the Scroll2d engine and the Death 3d engine. Of course, the new engine needs its maiden project, and I think that maybe the time is right to start working on:

My Colony 2: the first project to be based on the new engine.

Why My Colony 2? Just like Scroll2d, I have learned a lot since I started writing My Colony, and that engine is full of legacy code and strangeness and concepts that I would never even think about today. My Colony 2 is a great opportunity to take all of the best parts of the original, leave out the things that don't work, and bring in new ideas from the suggestions forum that can't be implemented in the current game without overhauling everything anyway.

My Colony 2 is only a concept right now, so all suggestions are on the table. Think of all of the things you wish were in the current My Colony. Ideas that would require a total rewrite of the game are now on the table, because I am literally doing a total rewrite of the game, which will also include a new server. I can make multiplayer that actually works properly if I design the game with multiplayer in mind from the beginning. All units and buildings will be 3d modeled using blender. I don't have a lot of the concepts worked out, but I am thinking that My Colony 2 will only feature United Earth instead of 4 different civs, so I can keep my focus this time.

So anyway, that is what's happening. I plan to finish Colony Wars sometime this month and My Empire next month, and I will then begin work on MC2, which will be built in complete open beta and all feedback and suggestions will be taken into account. So stay tuned for more!

Hello everyone! Today I will be publishing My Colony v1.7.0 to all platforms. This is a somewhat minor(ish) update, but includes some bug fixes that needed to go out sooner rather than later as they were impacting one of my servers somewhat substantially and causing issues not only for My Colony, but other games as well. There are some changes here and there that you will notice though, so let's take a peek at what's new in this release!

Firstly, I have completely removed the option for synchronous path finding, and now all path finding operations take place in the off-thread asynchronous routine. For whatever reason, the synchronous pathfinding was causing rovers and colonists to jump around the map and walk in strange directions, and I didn't want to waste a bunch of time figuring out. I decided that since most of the problems with the off-thread pathfinder have already been solved long ago and it has been the default setting for months, I would just make it official and remove the synchronous pathfinder from the game completely. I don't expect and negative issues from this, but if you find something then let me know!

Colonists will start protesting again in this update if your approval gets low enough. The mechanics and levels are similar to what they were before, except now the protests start more gradually and a little earlier on. You will notice the protestors outside of your capitol building if you have colonist rendering enabled.

Similar to the transit bus that was added in v1.5, there are now two new decorative units that you will see driving around your colony, the Ambulance and the Squad Car. These come from the hospitals and security stations, respectively. As of now their movements are random like the bus, but I thought it would be neat eventually to have at least the squad cars primarily drive around high-crime areas, as sort of a quick way to see where problems are without digging into stats. I also thought it would be neat to have the squad cars arrive at protests, and maybe have some building damage and fires caused by the protests, but I need to make a fire department before I can do any of that...

Insectoids now get to join their human and reptilian "friends" in the cross-regional mass transit game with their new Subterranean Transit Node. It works just like the bus station for Humans and it allows Insectoids to live and work in different regional cities.

Multiplayer regions have been completely dead in the game, and they should now be working again to a level that they were before. I think I might work on a complete upgrade and overhaul of the Multiplayer Region feature over the coming updates, so if you have big ideas and suggestions for this feature, then now is probably the time, because they are probably going to be next on the agenda.

Finally, I introduced two new share URI formats that the My Colony client can read and launch from. You can now easily share your charter code by creating a link like this: web+mycolony://join_sjlK2GZ9 (where sjlK2GZ9 is your charter), or a multiplayer region like this: web+mycolony://joinmp_u9rRFvyR (again, where u9rRFvyR is the charter). When someone clicks the link, the My Colony app should start and launch right into the join charter flow. Haven't tested it completely yet, but I'm pretty sure it works...

Anyway, that's all for today. Updates will be going out within the next few days here so be on the lookout, thanks for playing, and stay tuned for more!

Good catches, the "Storage Full" message is actually a relic from before I had the quantity slider on the import window, and it only allowed you to import a fixed amount at the time, set at the max amount for the building you opened the menu from. So if you could not import 1,000,000 starships at a time, it would say storage is full.

@die4pie does it just work if you use the latest version of the Ape Apps Launcher? I think I made a change for this exact error but I don't recall. Regardless, the latest code is in the Launcher, not in the stand-alone My Colony download.

Ohh I'll think about it. The reason for only having small and medium wasn't necessarily for testing purposes, but for performance purposes. Really the entire reason for regions in the first place was due to the poor performance of larger game files. The game warns that there will be performance issues when you start a new game on maps larger than medium, but everybody was doing it anyway and then complaining about the performance. So instead I created a new map type called Regions that breaks cities up into small chunks.

Thanks for the screenshots @Distman that might help me get this fixed. I've seen this before, I think it has something to do with OneDrive but perhaps not. Either way, give me a day here to put out a launcher update and maybe it will help.

Eventually the game data file is going to be a straight JSON file, as I have been working on a desktop application to edit and generate the game data file for me, so I do not have to make manual edits to it anymore. Don't ask me about a timeframe though!

Happy Mothers Day to everyone out there, and today is a quick bug patch release for My Colony! There were a couple of pressing issues in the recently released v1.5.0 that I couldn't put off for a full release, so we are getting a small update today.

This update just fixes a handful of bugs, increases the commuter capacity of the Regional Busing Authority to 400, and adds the Short Range Teleporter to the Reptilian civilization, allowing Reptilian regions travel between cities.

I hope this fixes some of the issues with v1.5.0, and stay tuned for more excitement coming soon!

Was just looking over the stats of My Colony on Google Play, and over the last several days the daily downloads have dropped from the 400 range to less than 10 downloads per day!

Pretty dramatic sudden drop. I haven't had any notice from them about a policy violation or uptick in errors or any other issue. Has anybody else noticed anything strange on the Play Story? If you try to find My Colony, does it still come up for you in search?

bastecklein

Brandon Stecklein (bastecklein) is the creator, owner, and principal developer of Ape Apps. He started the business back in 2010 and operates it out of Spring Hill, Kansas.

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Ape Apps is an independent software development company founded in 2010 by Brandon Stecklein. Over the years, Ape Apps has published over 400 apps and games across various platforms. You can get in touch with Brandon on Twitter or by leaving a post on his wall @bastecklein